[News] In the Spirit of Malcolm and Robeson, Indict the US at the UN

[Anti-Imperialist News]

In the Spirit of Malcolm and Robeson, Indict the U.S. at the U.N.

February 15, 2008 By Glen Ford
Source: 
<http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=527&Itemid=1>Black 
Agenda Radio

Thursday, February 21, marks the 43rd anniversary of the 
assassination of Malcolm X. It is appropriate that, on this date, 250 
American human rights organizations will challenge the U.S. at the 
United Nations for violations of the International Convention on the 
Elimination of Racial Discrimination, a treaty the U.S. ratified in 
1994. Arrogant American contempt for the UN does not insulate it from 
treaty obligations, which have the force of law. This year's 
treaty-mandated U.S. report to the U.N. refuses to acknowledge the 
racial disparities witnessed by the whole planet in the wake of 
Hurricane Katrina, the fact of racist police brutality, or the 
majority non-white nature of the American prison gulag. The challenge 
to the official American report to the U.N. is also a salute to the 
legacies of Malcolm X and the great Paul Robeson, who urged African 
Americans to transform the domestic fight for "civil rights" to a 
global battle for common "human rights."

It is a shameful indictment of American political culture that, even 
though the United Nations headquarters is physically located in the 
U.S., on the east side of Manhattan island, it might as well be in 
Sri Lanka or New Delhi when it comes to U.S. media attention. What 
the U.N. does is considered important news in most of the world, 
especially in the developing and formerly colonized world. But 
American media, much of it headquartered within walking distance of 
the United Nations, most often behaves as if the world body doesn't exist.

Racism and imperial chauvinism are at the root of thinly veiled U.S. 
disdain for the United Nations. The U.N. was founded, in 1945, as a 
creature of the winners of World War Two. The cards were stacked in 
the United States' favor, with America and its ideological allies 
arrayed against the Soviet Union in the U.N. Security Council, and 
much of the planet still under European colonial rule. With 
decolonization in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, the U.N. became a 
much more "non-white" environment. Membership now includes nearly 200 
countries. Apparently, that's way too much "color" for the white 
American comfort zone.

The American delegation to the U.N. will be even more discomforted on 
February 21st and 22nd, when the U.S. will be taken to task on its 
own domestic race relations. Many Americans don't know, or don't 
care, that international treaties to which the U.S. is a part have 
the force of law within the United States. One of those treaties is 
the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial 
Discrimination, which was adopted by the U.S. in 1994. Yet this is 
only the second year that Washington has even bothered to issue a 
report to the U.N. on the state of race relations in the U.S. - a 
report that the U.S. Human Rights Network calls a "whitewash."

The Human Rights Network is a coalition of 250 activist groups across 
the nation. They charge the Bush administration with being "utterly 
out of touch with the reality of racial discrimination in America." 
Washington fails "to even acknowledging the disparate racial impact 
on people of color of Hurricane Katrina." Police brutality against 
people of color is totally neglected in the official American report, 
which also sidesteps the question of why 60 percent of U.S. prison 
inmates are non-white. Muslims and people of Arab descent are 
targeted for draconian roundups and other pressures, in violation of 
the spirit and letter of the treaty, while Native Americans continue 
to suffer under the "legacy of colonialism and racial discrimination 
in the U.S."

Many Americans conveniently forget - or just don't give a damn - that 
racial discrimination violates a host of international laws. It is 
fitting that the U.S. will be confronted with many of these 
violations on Thursday, February 21st, the 43rd anniversary of the 
assassination of Malcolm X. It was Malcolm who insisted that what 
were then called "civil rights" were really "human rights" to which 
all people's of the world were entitled. In this, he picked up the 
banner waved by Paul Robeson and other African Americans of the Left, 
in the late 1940s, with their petition charging the United States 
with genocide against Black Americans. Malcolm's voice infused the 
Black Freedom Movement with an internationalist perspective; he 
called for African Americans to stand up as citizens of the world, 
rather than act like an isolated minority begging favors from a 
hostile domestic majority. Malcolm's legacy, and Paul Robeson's 
legacy, still challenge African Americans to grow up, to transcend 
Jim Crow politics, and to finally take their places on the liberation 
side of the world stage.



For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford.



BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at 
Glen.Ford at BlackAgendaReport.comThis e-mail address is being protected 
from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it.




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